The Hill News

The FAA and union change staffing practices that are "most likely to result in air traffic controller fatigue."

Yet another air traffic controller has fallen asleep on the job, prompting the Federal Aviation Administration Administration to change its scheduling practices.

Administrator Randy Babbitt announced Saturday that he, in consultation with the National Air Traffic Controllers Union, is prohibiting scheduling practices that "have been identified as those most likely to result in air traffic controller fatigue," according the FAA.

"There is no excuse for air traffic controllers to be sleeping on the job. We will do everything we can to put an end to this,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement.

The FAA is looking at ways to maximize rest but is not planning to make the details of the changes public Saturday. Among the possible targets for changes is a midnight shift that now begins only eight hours after the prior shift ends, an official said.

The FAA announced it had suspended an air traffic controller early that morning for falling asleep while on duty during the midnight shift at a Miami control center. The incident did not result in any missed calls, unlike a similar incident at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. last month.

“According to a preliminary review of air traffic tapes, the controller did not miss any calls from aircraft and there was no operational impact,” the FAA stated.

The latest turn of events comes after Hank Krakowski, the FAA official in charge of airport flight towers resigned April 13.

The FAA originally added a second person to the tower at Washington's Reagan National in March after two planes were forced to land without assistance when the controller working a fourth consecutive overnight shift was sleeping. 



In total, seven confirmed and suspected instances of sleeping have occured in recent months. Controllers at Reno-Tahoe International Airport in Nevada, at Boeing Field in Seattle, and at McGhee Tyson Airport in Knoxville, Tenn., were also confirmed to have fallen asleep on the job. Two controllers from Lubbock, Texas are still under investigation for allegedly having fallen asleep.